as was Isabella by her religious feeling. It was this,
combined with her excessive humility, which led to the only grave
errors in the administration of the latter. Her rival fell into no
such errors; and she was a stranger to the amiable qualities which led
to them. Her conduct was certainly not controlled by religious
principle; and, though the bulwark of the Protestant faith, it might
be difficult to say whether she were at heart most a Protestant or a
Catholic. She viewed religion in its connection with the state,--in
other words, with herself; and she took measures for enforcing
conformity to her own views, not a whit less despotic, and scarcely
less sanguinary, than those countenanced for conscience' sake by her
more bigoted rival.

"This feature of bigotry, which has thrown a shade over Isabella's
otherwise beautiful character, might lead to a disparagement of her
intellectual power, compared with that of the English queen. To
estimate this aright, we must contemplate the results of their
respective reigns. Elizabeth found all the materials of prosperity at
hand, and availed herself of them most ably to build up a solid fabric
of national grandeur. Isabella created these materials. She saw the
faculties of her people locked up in a death-like lethargy, and she
breathed into them the breath of life, for those great and heroic
enterprises which terminated in such glorious consequences to the
monarchy. It is when viewed from the depressed position of her early
days, that the achievements of her reign seem scarcely leas than
miraculous. The masculine genius of the English queen stands out
relieved beyond its natural dimensions by its separation from the
softer qualities of her sex; while her rival, like some vast and
symmetrical edifice, loses, in appearance, somewhat of its actual
grandeur, from the perfect harmony of its proportions.

"The circumstances of their deaths, which were somewhat similar,
displayed the great dissimilarity of their characters. Both pined
amidst their royal state, a prey to incurable despondency, rather than
any marked bodily distemper. In Elizabeth it sprang from wounded
vanity; a sullen conviction that she had outlived the admiration on
which she had so long fed, and even the solace of friendship, and the
attachment of her subjects. Nor did she seek consolation where alone
it was to be found, in that sad hour. Isabella, on the other hand,
sank under a too acute sensibility to the suffe